Guild Wars 2

moiraine.2753:

When TxS is doing the Wurm those icons for map are some times used.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Commander

Which reminds me of one other feature I forgot to mention before. Some months ago map pings (Shift+Left-click) and strokes (Shift+Left-click-and-drag) were updated. In addition to the usual behavior of those being sent to party members, when a commander does them, they’re also sent to members of their squad.

Lonami.2987:

… I wrote some ideas for a prestige commander tag icon system here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Lon-ami/Commander_system_improvements

Thanks, Lon-ami. That’s a ton of work and a very thorough design! I remember seeing these a little while ago. Commander progression is big enough to be entirely its own topic. It’s also more into the design side of things than I am, so I’m not really one to comment on it.

Elrey.5472:

Most of the issues that i’ve seen has been about not knowing how many players of each class there’s around.
-Example: Everyday in Tequatl we ask to our map chat to type a W for each warrior in the zerg, in order to manage how many banners to rez people we have. We also ask how many guardians for the Tome elite skill to heal if needed.

Reborn.2934:

i don’t know some basic info and stats of the players around me / follow me. for example if i had as info from the guardians near me ( the armor , vitality and the healing power ) i can suggest them were they should stay in battle … even an uplevel char can use a siege with safety if he has the mastery…

That makes sense. As you both wrote, having this kind of information readily available can completely change what tactics a commander knows they have available. The more fine-grained that information is, the more advice they can give to individual members. Though getting into available skills like portal/banner/healing tome, and especially actual stats, gets a little tricky. The more detailed and specific to a player the information is, the more open it leaves players to harassment if a commander doesn’t like someone’s build. I’d hate to sour people’s impressions of joining squads if they happened to have a few bad experiences. Even if there’s an opt-in checkbox somewhere to advertise build information, players who choose not to may still be harassed.

(Side note: If any player anywhere in the game is ever being abusive or bullying anyone, please report them immediately.)

Following is a clunky first-pass of an idea, but how useful would something like “/squad count portal” returning the number mesmers in the squad with portal equipped be? (And so on for any skill by doing a text search on the name.) Is the clumsiness of it offset by squad members changing less often than this needs to be checked? How useful is it compared to asking for portal counts in text or using voice chat?

Thanks for the work on translating, mocking-up, and thoroughly describing a commander GUI, Tiscan.

Tiscan.8345:

The only squad-related UI-elements are “hidden” in the “Groups” dialog where most people wouldn’t really expect them.

There’s one more tool commanders have for organizing their squads that I want to be sure people know about. Alt+left-clicking the map to set an attack/defend/rally icon for their squad: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Commander

Do you think these squad directive icons are useful? What issues do you see with them, if any?

Tiscan.8345:

After creating a squad, the icon of the button changes to a colored version – so the commander gets a visual feedback he is using his tag. At the same time, a new window appears below the button (Attachemnt. Its a very minimal display of the squad-stats (number of players, supplies, squad-members by class, how many of them are upscaled).

Your click-to-open UI could provide a lot of information without cluttering up the usual view of the game, which is pretty nice. Though for supply in particular, a more constant display may be worth the visual noise. That seems like it changes rapidly and is always relevant.

Tiscan.8345:

One thing i forgot in that dialog is a combobox which allows the commander to switch between “Show stats for squad-members” and “Show stats for all nearby players” (lets face it: most of the time people don’t join squads).

I love the idea of making info available on nearby allied players.

Tiscan.8345:

By right-clicking on a name he should be able to kick players from his squad (for example if they are offline, switched maps, etc.). By using the combo-box at the bottom of that dialog he can also decide which players he sees (only those in his squad or all nearby players).

Having some nice way to clean up the squad would definitely be useful. Does it need to be fine-grained to each player? Or would something along the lines of a “Kick offline/afk members.” button serve enough of the same purpose? That might do something like remove players who have been offline or afk for five minutes from the squad, to make room for more players and to clean up the UI.

I’m also interested in learning more about what sets of behaviors commanders go through today. For example, to learn cumbersome parts of the UI. Such as opening the world map to check on objectives… then blindly running off a cliff and dying. Or which parts of the UI, preferably simple and small like you’ve aimed to keep things, are just missing right now.

Chris Barrett.3280:

TL;DR: Please do the following only if you have completed the WvW Spring Tournament 2014 meta-achievement:

1. Check your in-game mail for 100 new Tournament tickets.
   1. If you don’t have this mail, skip the remaining steps and submit a ticket.
2. Speak to the Battle Historian in-game, and note the world you’re Associated with in your chat window in yellow text.
   1. If you don’t see the world you expected to see, post here and/or submit a ticket. Go no further.
3. Use the first conversation option to claim your tournament tickets.
4. Enjoy spending the tickets as you please.

To clarify step 2.1, about not seeing the world you expect. If you’re in the same datacenter (NA vs EU) as the world you would expect to see, please do not submit a ticket to CS. This issue of not seeing your most-Associated world only occurs when both of the below are true:

• You have some Association with at least one NA world, and some with at least one EU world.
• The world you expect to be associated with is not in the datacenter you’re in today.

In this case, the Historian is telling you the world you’re most associated with in the current datacenter, since it doesn’t know anything about worlds from the other datacenter.

If you think you’re in this case, please submit a ticket to see about getting the necessary transfer(s) to claim your rewards from a world in a different datacenter.

Some additional information for the technically-inclined.

An interesting combination of two bugs affected this tournament, causing those premature rewards and Association lock-in. One new from our work on the tournament, one very old that never showed itself before, because nothing else happened to hit just the right case before this tournament. The old one is of a sort that’s very rare to catch (so I’m glad we now know it exists, so that we can fix it). A timing issue on cross-server communication would sometimes cause some maps to, for just a few seconds to a few minutes, have one particular time-related variable set to many years in the future (well beyond the end of the tournament). This then caused some players to be granted a tournament placement achievement prematurely (the “1st place”, etc. achievements with rewards attached).

TL;DR: Please do the following only if you have completed the WvW Spring Tournament 2014 meta-achievement:

1. Check your in-game mail for 100 new Tournament tickets.
   1. If you don’t have this mail, skip the remaining steps and submit a ticket.
2. Speak to the Battle Historian in-game, and note the world you’re Associated with in your chat window in yellow text.
   1. If you don’t see the world you expected to see, post here and/or submit a ticket. Go no further.
3. Use the first conversation option to claim your tournament tickets.
4. Enjoy spending the tickets as you please.

Issues with either not receiving the new Tournament tickets, or receiving a wrong number, are related to world Association for the purposes of WvW Spring Tournament 2014. Part of the problem is a cross-datacenter limitation (more on this later).

Here’s exactly how Association worked for this latest tournament, and why it can have the effects some of you are seeing .

For WvW Spring Tournament 2014, this is how Association scoring worked:

• Load into a WvW map for the first time that day: Gain 1 Association score for your current home world.
• Complete any achievement that contributes to the WvW Spring Tournament 2014 meta achievement: Gain 2 Association score for your current home world.

Your main Associated shard is then the one with the highest score within the current datacenter. That last part is the caveat that’s preventing some tournament rewards from being issued. Or in some cases “wrong” rewards (working as intended, but not desired, and certainly not clear). Auroma.9126, it sounds like you have 0 Association in the EU datacenter, so the servers there can’t give you rewards, since they don’t see any non-zero Association scores for worlds in that datacenter. In other cases, if a player transferred mid-tournament and has Associations in both datacenters, their rewards will be bound to the most-Associated shard within the datacenter when they talk to the Battle Historian to get the new tournament tickets. This is the intended behavior for this tournament, but has been confounded by issues with Association getting locked-in prematurely.

Some rewards were incorrectly granted too early. When rewards are given, your most-associated world is locked-in at that moment. This applies even if you change datacenters. Your Association scores can still change, but your one true Association for that tournament is still the one from which you received rewards. With the fix that went out on June 17th, that lock was reset, resetting your most-Associated world to whichever one has the highest score in your current datacenter, until talking to the Historian and getting the rewards locks/locked it in again.

We’re investigating a bug or bugs involved with delivering this tournament’s rewards to some players. We’ll update this thread when we have more information available.

Aretimus Wolfe.6589:

Hi Chris! First off ty for looking into this. I can say with complete confidence that I took note of my main characters rank before the update (rank 941) as I knew I wouldn’t be able to play again until after the update due to health issues.

I was curious why I had no reward chests at all awaiting me once all was tallied up. I play a lot of wvw and haven’t used my alts too much in this regard as my main was much more useful with all those points in abilities.

Thanks again for looking into this

Here’s what I’m seeing for your WXP totals (I’ll use the first letter of each character’s names, in case you don’t want their whole names displayed here):
A few days before the 4/15 update

• I.S. — 13,374 WXP (Rank 5).
• M.T.F. — 336,570 WXP (Rank 70)
• P.A. — 4,544 WXP (Rank 4)
• P. — 1,053 WXP (Rank 2)
• V. — 4,312,864 WXP (Rank 865)

A couple of days after the 4/15 update (only changes listed)

• V. — 4,351,360 WXP (Rank 873)

If the first sample’s values were all summed, you’d be at Rank 934 for your account. From the second sample, Rank 941. The only time you should’ve seen a Rank above 900 is after V. and M.T.F. were summed. So while I don’t know how a Rank above 900 could’ve been seen prior to 4/15 (maybe there was a brief display bug), your WXP totals look right. Assuming you gained 38,496 WXP on V. between those samples (8 Ranks).

Knox.3748:

What about people with loads of chests?

There was a bug with the 4/15 release that gave out pending bonus Rank-gain chests to some players erroneously. We didn’t intend to change the number of these pending bonus chests for anyone, since they were already account-bound and acting as we wanted. In a recent hotfix, the chests were given both soft and hard caps.

• The pending bonus chests granted after a WvW match ends now cap at 99.
• Existing chests are now capped at 250. Any extras beyond that cap are discarded.

I’m investigating this issue. Nothing final to report yet, but I wanted you to know that it’s being looked into.

One suspicion I have as to what happened has to do with how the account-bound WXP feature was released in phases. For some time prior to the 4/15 update, we had the WXP of characters which loaded into maps added to the account total. But your character’s WXP was still being displayed and used for game logic as before. This let us check on the correctness of things before completely using account-bound WXP.

So, one thing I think might have happened: If you took note of your Rank after the 4/15 update, that account Rank would have already included the WXP from other characters that you played with while we were in the prior phase of testing account-bound WXP. Then after using one of those other characters, your account Rank wouldn’t have changed, since that character would have already been added to the account total.

XacTactX.6709:

Hello, could you please tell me if the nametags will be account bound or character bound? If I make a new character, will it be Legend or Invader?

Nametags are directly based on Rank. Post-April 15th, no matter which character you play with, every one of them will share your account’s single Rank/nametag. If your account is at Rank 120, you’re a Legend no matter which character you use.

XacTactX.6709:

Also, will we still get WXP Mini-Boosters for the first 4 ranks?

Yes. But, now you only go through the first 4 Ranks once. Even if you create a new character, they’ll still be at your account’s Rank, and rolling on the appropriate loot tables for higher-Ranked chests.

Here’s some examples that should cover all questions. If I’ve missed anything, please do point it out. All characters listed in examples are shown as pre-April 15th. Resulting accounts are post-April 15th.

Example 1) WXP is summed, not Rank.
Character A
    Rank 2 exactly
    1,000 WXP
Character B
    Rank 1 exactly
    0 WXP
Resulting Account
    Rank 2 exactly
    1,000 WXP

Example 2) Remember that Ranks 1-5 are easier to acquire.
Character A
    Rank 5 exactly
    4,000 WXP
Character B
    Rank 5 exactly
    4,000 WXP
Resulting Account
    Rank 5, with 4/5 progress to Rank 6  (5 -> 6 is 5,000 WXP)
    8,000 WXP

Example 3) Rank 3 -> 4 now takes 1,000 WXP (used to be 2,000)
Character A
    Rank 4 and 1,000 of 2,000 WXP progress to Rank 5
    4,000 WXP
Resulting Account
    Rank 5 exactly
    4,000 WXP

Both pre- and post-April 15th, all characters have a number of World Ability Points to spend equal to their Rank. Post-April 15th, that Rank comes from the account’s total WXP instead of the character’s individual WXP. Spending one of these points on one character has zero effect on your other characters (same as pre-April 15th). So if your account is Rank 5, every character can spend its own 5 Points in any way you want.

For some interesting (I think), tangential insight on the account-bound WXP feature, read on.

The original WXP-per-Rank table we shipped when WXP launched had a typo. Rank 2 -> 3 took 999 WXP, and Rank 3 -> 4 took 1,001 WXP. We’ve been careful to make this feature’s changes to the Live game in stages so correctness could be confirmed (as much as possible) in advance of the feature being released completely. That typo was already fixed for the Live game, but it means that anyone with exactly 1,999 WXP dropped from Rank 3 to Rank 2 with 1 WXP to go until being Rank 3 again.

Seems like a rare case, but with the sheer number of players in the Live game, there was one character who was not only at 1,999 WXP exactly, but they also encountered a bug. Remember way back when gaining a WvW Rank meant you had another Ability point to spend, and maybe a new title? Back before we gave chests whenever you gained a Rank. When Rank-gain chests were added, some extra logic was added with them to retro-actively give people a second Rank-gain chest whenever they gained a Rank, until they gained everything they should have. This way, those who already earned a bunch of Ranks didn’t miss out on the loot. I won’t go into great detail on the bug itself, but if a character was from before those Rank-gain chests were added and tried to enter the game, and they lost a Rank, that character wouldn’t be allowed into the game. Because of that WXP-per-Rank typo fix, it became possible in that one case to decrease in Rank— that was never possible before. Apologies to the asura that tried to play those handful of times one Sunday evening! After seeing those failed attempts, the bug was quickly fixed.

So, the point of the story is that even relatively “simple” changes (“sum some values and use that sum instead of a different value”) require a lot of testing. Even with that testing, we may not hit every possible case. However, the impressive force of tons of players all causing the code to run undoubtedly will.

Here’s our current status on granting the missing Season reward chests. If you’re still in the same region (NA or EU) as you were when the Season began, you’re in situation A. Otherwise, you’re in situation B.

Situation A (still in the same region):
When the Edge of the Mists map is released, it will come with a code fix to grant you the appropriate Season reward when you next load into any map on any character.

Situation B (now in a different region):
We’re still finalizing the solution for this issue. It will be in soon after the Edge of the Mists map. Current setups we’re looking at are along the lines of talking to an NPC or loading into a particular map; either would be with any character.

Thanks for any patience extended while we work the kinks out of a new system.

TL;DR: If you are now in a different territory (NA versus EU) from when you first played during Season 1, your Season rewards won’t be granted until we can solve a technical issue. There’s also a different small chance you won’t get the Season reward later in a WvW match. That chance is near-zero shortly after a new match starts up. You will eventually get the Season rewards.

In-depth details follow.

Season reward chests are granted via a hidden achievement, which differs for each place within a League. Whether your world placed first in Gold or Bronze League, you’ll be given the same achievement. The Dolyak finishers are delivered by the in-game mail system if your world placed first in its League. The mail differs for each League.

The game use two pieces of information to know which achievement/mail you should receive. One is historical WvW data so it knows how your world placed in the Season. The other is which world you’re associated with for the Season. This association was made the first time you entered the world during Season 1.

Issue 1: Worlds in the NA and EU territories don’t know about each other’s historical WvW data. So if you’re in a different territory from the one you were associated with for Season 1, the game doesn’t know how your world placed and can’t reward you. Yet. Once this issue is fixed, the Season reward will be granted. We know who should get the rewards, and who has not yet received them.

Issue 2: There’s a bug that sometimes prevents certain games from knowing any historical WvW data—even for their own territory. This can prevent the game from giving Season rewards. This also affected the Dawn of the Seasons achievement’s behavior. Until this is tracked down and fixed, there seems to be a smaller chance to be given the Season rewards later in the week of a WvW match. Chances are extremely good shortly after a new match has started that you’ll be given the rewards.

Thank you for your patience while we solve these issues. While there are quicker ways to get rewards out to people who are missing them, it’s best we take the time to fix the underlying issues and allow the corrected code to issue the rewards in due time. Neither player nor developer wants the same issue to potentially happen a second time. Or for rushed work to cause different issues in the future.

For those of you who like things in a more machine-friendly format, I’ve attached a csv file of all matchups for both NA and EU.

A hotfix was just released. The WvW Season 1 achievements are now unblocked for everyone.

LionZero.3479:

This patch has unlocked all but one perk for me, Advanced mist invasion defender is still locked, so the bug is not fully fixed yet.

The prerequisite for Advanced Mists Invasion Defender is Mists Invasion Defender. Once you defeat 10 enemies in WvW, Advanced Mists Invasion Defender will be available to progress.

Round 1 10/18 thru 10/25
League Red Blue Green
Gold Blackgate Sanctum of Rall Jade Quarry
Gold Maguuma Sea of Sorrows Tarnished Coast
Silver Dragonbrand Fort Aspenwood Stormbluff Isle
Silver Yak’s Bend Ehmry Bay Borlis Pass
Silver Northern Shiverpeaks Isle of Janthir Crystal Desert
Bronze Ferguson’s Crossing Henge of Denravi Kaineng
Bronze Eredon Terrace Sorrow’s Furnace Darkhaven
Bronze Anvil Rock Gate of Madness Devona’s Rest

Round 2 10/25 thru 11/1
League Red Blue Green
Gold Maguuma Sea of Sorrows Jade Quarry
Gold Tarnished Coast Blackgate Sanctum of Rall
Silver Northern Shiverpeaks Ehmry Bay Stormbluff Isle
Silver Dragonbrand Isle of Janthir Borlis Pass
Silver Yak’s Bend Fort Aspenwood Crystal Desert
Bronze Anvil Rock Sorrow’s Furnace Kaineng
Bronze Ferguson’s Crossing Gate of Madness Darkhaven
Bronze Eredon Terrace Henge of Denravi Devona’s Rest

Round 3 11/1 thru 11/8
League Red Blue Green
Gold Sea of Sorrows Blackgate Sanctum of Rall
Gold Maguuma Tarnished Coast Jade Quarry
Silver Yak’s Bend Isle of Janthir Stormbluff Isle
Silver Northern Shiverpeaks Fort Aspenwood Borlis Pass
Silver Dragonbrand Ehmry Bay Crystal Desert
Bronze Eredon Terrace Gate of Madness Kaineng
Bronze Anvil Rock Henge of Denravi Darkhaven
Bronze Ferguson’s Crossing Sorrow’s Furnace Devona’s Rest

Round 4 11/8 thru 11/15
League Red Blue Green
Gold Maguuma Blackgate Sanctum of Rall
Gold Sea of Sorrows Tarnished Coast Jade Quarry
Silver Northern Shiverpeaks Yak’s Bend Dragonbrand
Silver Isle of Janthir Ehmry Bay Fort Aspenwood
Silver Crystal Desert Borlis Pass Stormbluff Isle
Bronze Anvil Rock Eredon Terrace Ferguson’s Crossing
Bronze Gate of Madness Sorrow’s Furnace Henge of Denravi
Bronze Devona’s Rest Darkhaven Kaineng

Round 5 11/15 thru 11/22
League Red Blue Green
Gold Sea of Sorrows Blackgate Jade Quarry
Gold Maguuma Tarnished Coast Sanctum of Rall
Silver Isle of Janthir Yak’s Bend Northern Shiverpeaks
Silver Borlis Pass Dragonbrand Stormbluff Isle
Silver Ehmry Bay Crystal Desert Fort Aspenwood
Bronze Gate of Madness Eredon Terrace Anvil Rock
Bronze Darkhaven Ferguson’s Crossing Kaineng
Bronze Sorrow’s Furnace Devona’s Rest Henge of Denravi

Round 6 11/22 thru 11/29
League Red Blue Green
Gold Tarnished Coast Sanctum of Rall Jade Quarry
Gold Maguuma Sea of Sorrows Blackgate
Silver Yak’s Bend Ehmry Bay Stormbluff Isle
Silver Isle of Janthir Dragonbrand Fort Aspenwood
Silver Northern Shiverpeaks Crystal Desert Borlis Pass
Bronze Eredon Terrace Sorrow’s Furnace Kaineng
Bronze Gate of Madness Ferguson’s Crossing Henge of Denravi
Bronze Anvil Rock Devona’s Rest Darkhaven

Round 7 11/29 thru 12/5
League Red Blue Green
Gold Blackgate Sanctum of Rall Jade Quarry
Gold Maguuma Sea of Sorrows Tarnished Coast
Silver Dragonbrand Fort Aspenwood Stormbluff Isle
Silver Yak’s Bend Ehmry Bay Borlis Pass
Silver Northern Shiverpeaks Isle of Janthir Crystal Desert
Bronze Ferguson’s Crossing Henge of Denravi Kaineng
Bronze Eredon Terrace Sorrow’s Furnace Darkhaven
Bronze Anvil Rock Gate of Madness Devona’s Rest

The October 15th release will correct the bug that’s preventing Ruins objectives from returning to a “Neutral” ownership state in the API.

Borderlands Bloodlust ownership will also be added to the match_details resource.

Details: API Changes with upcoming WvW changes?

Narax:
After the October 15th release, Ruins capture points will properly return to “Neutral” in the match_details resource when they naturally decay to a neutral state.

Nabrok:
The Supply Camp, Tower, Keep, and Castle icons are handled differently from the Ruins icons. The Ruins icons we have in all three team’s colors. The other icons are greyscale, which we then colorize in code. Since the files API doesn’t support the same sort of colorization process, making these other icons available will take more time (no ETA).

Polonium.4725:

Is there any way to know who has the bloodlust bonuses? Do we need to monitor it ourself ?
The buff changes owner when another server keeps 3 points for 2 minutes.

When the October 15th update goes live, the match_details resource will include Borderlands Bloodlust information in a new “bonuses” array. The format looks like…

"maps": [
    {
      "type": "RedHome",
      "scores": [ 80148, 7022, 18582 ],
      "objectives": [
        { "id": 32, "owner": "Red", "owner_guild": "277CCE76-6254-4CF2-8A2D-15A30B7110BD" },
        { "id": 35, "owner": "Green" },
        ...
      ],
      "bonuses": [
        { "type": "bloodlust", "owner": "Red" }
      ]
    },
    ...

Every map object will have a bonuses array. In maps which are not providing any bonus to any player team, that array will be empty. So the bonuses array will empty on the Center map, and on any Borderlands map which is not providing the bonus to one of the Red, Blue, or Green teams.

The frequency of match_details updates will be the same as it is now.

There won’t be any API changes for WvW Season 1 or the new Ruins objectives in the Borderlands.

However, there will be some new data related to the Ruins in the match_details and objective_names resources.

These are the new objective ids you’ll be seeing in the resources:
62: Red Borderlands’ Temple of Lost Prayers
63: Red Borderlands’ Battle’s Hollow
64: Red Borderlands’ Bauer’s Estate
65: Red Borderlands’ Orchard Overlook
66: Red Borderlands’ Carver’s Ascent
67: Blue Borderlands’ Carver’s Ascent
68: Blue Borderlands’ Orchard Overlook
69: Blue Borderlands’ Bauer’s Estate
70: Blue Borderlands’ Battle’s Hollow
71: Blue Borderlands’ Temple of Lost Prayers
72: Green Borderlands’ Carver’s Ascent
73: Green Borderlands’ Orchard Overlook
74: Green Borderlands’ Bauer’s Estate
75: Green Borderlands’ Battle’s Hollow
76: Green Borderlands’ Temple of Lost Prayers

The attached files are:

• A close-up screenshot of the new Borderlands map showing where the Ruins objectives are located.
• All the Ruins icons in red, blue, green, and neutral colors.

Thanks for making us aware of this bug, and providing enough detail so we could observe the same behavior on our end.

A fix for this has been written; please keep an eye on the patch notes (or your turret’s behavior) to see when it goes live.